Horrible Judge Of Character / Film

Horrible Judges of Character in Animated and Live-Action Movies

Animated Films

• In 101 Dalmatians, upon meeting Anita’s friend Cruella De Vil, Roger immediately realizes she’s bad news the first time he meets her, but Anita refuses to believe that her old friend could have been the one who stole Pongo and Perdita’s puppies, even after Cruella’s violent outburst when they refused to sell them to her.
• The Sultan from Disney's Aladdin is the only one who doesn't see the Obviously Evil Jafar for what he really is, and considers him his most trusted advisor until Aladdin smashes Jafar's snake staff and exposes his treachery. The movie even lampshades this when the Sultan prides himself to be an excellent judge of character, and Iago grumbles his sarcastic "NOT!"
• Beauty and the Beast:
  • The villagers qualify, no doubt. Even though Gaston clearly made no effort to hide his Jerkass nature, such as lusting after Belle despite clearly knowing she isn't into him or trying to blackmail her into marrying him by threatening to send her father Maurice to an asylum, they still love him.
  • Even Maurice, Belle's father, initially thinks that Gaston is a decent enough guy only because of his good looks. He even suggested Belle spending time with him. Of course, that was the beginning of the movie.
• Tadashi Hamada, Hiro's older brother from Big Hero 6, is proven to be too trustworthy of his teacher Professor Callaghan to even realize that he's secretly the villainous Yokai. This is what ultimately gets himself killed when Callaghan burns down the entire school, causing Tadashi to try to save Callaghan from the fire, and Callaghan even points out how foolish Tadashi was by trusting Callaghan too much.
• Cinderella: After Cinderella's biological mother passed away, her father thought marrying Lady Tremaine would offer Cinderella a positive mother figure. Let's just say he was wrong.
• The Emperor's New Groove: Emperor Kuzco not only agrees to have dinner with Yzma after he both fired and flat-out insulted her, kicking off her scheme of killing and usurping him for control over the empire, but he also believes that she and Kronk are trying to locate and bring him home rather than kill him, as Pacha attempted to warn him. Also, it never seems to occur to him that Yzma could be the one behind his transformation into a llama, even when he knows full well that she has a "secret" laboratory where she would be able to create a potion that could change him into a different creature. It takes him overhearing Yzma berate Kronk for botching the poison attempt to realize how evil Yzma truly is despite all the clear indicators that should have tipped him off. Of course, before character development set in, Kuzco was an arrogant, selfish jerk. It's likely he was just so full of himself that he couldn't conceive of Yzma betraying him because of his ego.
• A Goofy Movie. Goofy is convinced that his Toxic Friend Pete is "good with kids," despite Pete more-or-less mentally abusing his son for years. When Pete hears of Max's aloofness, he presents as a concerning issue that Max may end up becoming a criminal. Goofy initially shrugs it off, but the notion returns when he is called by the very neurotic principal over the stunt Max pulled. The principal rants in extreme hyperbole, leading to Goofy taking Max on the fishing trip. Later Pete convinces Goofy that the way to keep your kids good is to "keep 'em under your thumb", despite him doing that to PJ only demonstrating that all that does is make your kids miserable. Overall, it fails as Goofy tries to be more assertive. This leads to even more problems when Pete overhears Max telling PJ about editing the road trip map.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Quasimodo. Especially when it comes to Frollo's true evil nature (until the climax, at least). Justified due to being raised by Frollo and kept in isolation for his entire life.
  Esmeralda: How could such a cruel man have raised someone like you?
  Quasimodo: Cruel?!? Oh, no. He saved my life. He took me in when no one else would. I am a monster, you know.
• Aunt Sarah from Lady and the Tramp is this to an extreme degree. Throughout her scenes, she's constantly mean to Lady and considers her a danger to the baby. Things don't get better in the climax where the rat gets into the baby's open window and Tramp is able to kill it before it hurts the baby. She assumes that Tramp tried to hurt the baby, locked him in the closet until the pound arrived and threw Lady in the basement.
• The Lion King (1994): Both Mufasa and Simba seem to trust the Obviously Evil uncle Scar. In Mufasa's case, he always put up with Scar's constant envy and discontent, but he just never expected his brother to be really evil enough to betray him. By the time Mufasa realizes who Scar truly is, it's too late for him as Scar tosses him to his demise.
• In The Magic Roundabout film "Dougal and the Blue Cat", Florence and everyone except for Dougal takes a liking to Buxton the blue cat when he arrives in the garden. They trust Buxton and shower him with attention, completely unaware that the cat was really hatching an evil plan to take over the garden. The only one who correctly suspects Buxton is up to no good is Dougal. It doesn't help that they don't believe Dougal when he tries to tell them that Buxton is evil upon seeing the cat shedding Crocodile Tears. They do realise their mistake after they were captured and imprisoned by Buxton's army.
• Megamind: Megamind genuinely believes Hal Stewart is the perfect candidate for Metro Man's replacement, even though Hal is an immature creep whose only motivation is to get Roxanne's attention. Megamind does realize his mistake, though, once Hal starts terrorizing Metro City after being turned down by Roxanne.
  Megamind: Just look at him.
  Minion: No, he doesn't look quite the hero-type to me.
• ParaNorman: This was Judge Hopkins' Fatal Flaw. Pun aside, he believed Agatha to be a Wicked Witch without noticing she was innocent. Justified because he was scared of her powers to talk to the dead. As such, this is Averted after he had a Heel Realization.
• In Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, this seems to be an unfortunate side-effect of Phineas and Ferb's eternal optimism as they didn't realize that either of the two Doofenshmirtzes was evil until they were flat-out told about it.
  • Although the trope may be subverted in how they judged Doof-1 since he was very nice and polite with them.
  • While they have dodged many adults throughout the series, they never encountered one who would hurt them just to expose Perry's secret identity.
  • Same can be said for Phineas thinking that Perry kept his secret identity because he never cared for them as a family. If only he had read the pamphlet.
• Pinocchio, both in the Disney film, and in the Filmation unofficial sequel, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night. He seems to think he can trust absolutely everyone he comes across. Worse yet, he often trusts people that he's well aware have double-crossed him before. In the latter, he willingly makes deals with a boatman with glowing red eyes aboard a ship referred to as "The Empire of the Night."
• The Princess and the Frog: The entire plot is kicked off when Prince Naveen is easily duped by the Obviously Evil Dr. Facilier and turned into a frog. Tiana even lampshades how stupid Naveen was to trust him:
  Tiana: You mean to tell me this all happened because you were messin' with the Shadow Man?!
  Naveen: [defensively] He was very charismatic!
• In Rugrats in Paris, Chas Finster proves to be one, failing to see that Chuckie is terrified of Coco LaBouche. This is justified as Coco is rather good at flirting with men despite her contempt of children. He does realize his mistake at the end though.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: This is the Fatal Flaw of Snow White. She completely trusts a creepy hag and thinks she's just a nice "poor old lady", which shows just how tragically good and pure she is — even her animal friends who immediately realize something is up can't convince her not to help.
• In Plucky and Hamton's sub-plot of Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, Hamton's family picks up Mr. Hitcher, a dangerous hitchhiker, on their way to the HappyWorldLand amusement park. Unlike Plucky, who has listened to a news report describing Mr. Hitcher as an escaped dangerous criminal, the Pig family don't seem to see him that way, despite his obvious hints, such as his Hockey Mask and Chainsaw. Even worse is that Hamton gives Mr. Hitcher Plucky's address, rather than his own, much to the latter's horror.

Live-Action Films

• In the mystery film After the Thin Man, Nora Charles's cousin Selma chooses one man over another to marry. The "winner" proves to be a cold-hearted philanderer while the "loser" is finally revealed to be a raving madman. Selma's mother: "You sure can pick 'em!"
• In Byzantium, Nice Guy Darvell thinking Ruthven might be a good, noble recruit for the Brethren, even though Ruthven raped Clara and abandoned Darvell, robbed his corpse, and stole his estate
• John Bishop from the first Child's Play film takes this to Too Dumb to Live levels. Despite having the nickname of "Dr. Death", he's as principled a practitioner of Hollywood Voodoo as any you could hope to find — and he pegs none other than Charles Lee Ray, the future Chucky, to be his student. Not content with that monumental lapse of judgment, he decides Ray is trustworthy enough to let in on the secret place where he keeps the Voodoo Doll he has made of himself. Literally no one but him is surprised by how he meets his end.
• Disenchanted (2022): Giselle's utterly trusting nature (and inability to pick up on tones like sarcasm) means she doesn't notice how Malvina is not as outwardly nice as she appears. It gets worse when the magic wish kicks in, and makes Malvina even more Obviously Evil than she already was.
  Giselle: (sincerely) And she's a magic queen. Those are always fun.
  Pip: Ehhh, I ain't sure how "fun" she looks.
• In Dumb and Dumber, Harry and Lloyd don't usually pick up hitchhikers but they make an exception to a guy who is trying to kill them.
• All of the other candidates in Exam, for trusting White who is a Manipulative Bastard.
• In Fallen Angel, June Mills is an intelligent woman, but she still falls in love with and marries a man who she knows conned her hometown of Walton.
• Guest House Paradiso: Gina Carbonara thinks the pervy, condescending Richie is a sweet man and believes she can trust Eddie with her identity, only moments after meeting him. (Compared to her boyfriend, however, those two are saints).
• Alan Garner from The Hangover is dumbfounded when he finds out that he was sold roofies instead of ecstasy because the drug dealer "seemed like a real straight shooter". It later turns out the dealer did intend to sell him ecstasy but accidentally got the bags mixed up. He also remains friends with Leslie Chow in the sequels, despite knowing full well that he's an international criminal.
• In the Disney Channel Original Movie Hounded, Armand Columbus, the former headmaster of Columbus Hall, was this to his son-in-law, Ward Van Dusen. Upon succeeding Armand as headmaster, Ward was all about nepotism throughout his tenure, letting his many family members who attended Columbus, including his son, Ronny, get away with anything, and most of that animosity was directed towards the Martin brothers, Jay and Mike. For instance, before Ronny and Jay attended Columbus, Ward cut Mike from the baseball team to make room for his nephew, who never even played the sport in his life. When Ward helped Ronny fraudulently obtain the Donald Peterson scholarship that was rightfully meant for Jay, the Martin brothers worked together to avenge their family's honor. By the end of the film, Armand sees through Ward's corruption and nepotism, retakes his old job as headmaster of Columbus and demotes him to secretary and rightfully awards Jay the scholarship while stripping Ronny of it and sending him to military school.
• The live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas! embellishes Cindy Lou Who's encounter with the Santa-disguised Grinch as he's stealing her home's Christmas trappings. She tells him that the Grinch isn't a bad person, just lonely. The Grinch remarks to himself that she's a "nice kid", but a "baaad judge of character". Given his later change of heart, it turns out she was spot-on after all, and it's actually he who falls into this trope.
• Mick in Idiot Box looks up to his friend Kev, unaware that Kev is a sociopath. He remains unaware even as he starts to move beyond Kev's influence and realize he can make more of his life than Kev ever could.
• Indiana Jones is notoriously betrayed at least once in almost every movie. The amount of people who haven't betrayed him on his adventures are in the single digits.
• The Interview: Dave very easily fell for Kim Jong-Un's Nice Guy act at first.
• James Bond:
  • Diamonds Are Forever has Professor Dr. Metz, who builds the diamond-encrusted satellite for Blofeld out of the insanely stupid belief that SPECTRE's dedicated to global disarmament, rather than the blackmail-for-profit schemes they'd committed in all the previous films up until now.
  • Frederick Gray, the British Minister of Defense from The Spy Who Loved Me to The Living Daylights pretty much embodies this trope throughout the Bond films. Pretty much all of his appearances has him doubting the film's Big Bad is anything other than an ally of Britain or an Honest Corporate Executive, only to be proven wrong by Bond's subsequent investigation into them. Special mention has to be given to his final appearance in which not only he, but also M and practically all of MI6 except for Bond, believe that the film's Big Bad is a genuine KGB defector, rather than a fraud seeking to play the British and Soviets against each other while he uses the distraction to accomplish his own agenda.
  • Licence to Kill gives us a rare villainous example in Latin American drug lord Franz Sanchez. Because he believes that Bond saved him from a botched assassination attempt by Hong Kong narcotics (really, it was the other way around), he believes Bond's (false) suggestions that his henchmen are in fact, plotting against him, prompting Sanchez to go Bad Boss on his loyal employees.
  • Pretty much all the good guys get hit with this trope at least once in The World Is Not Enough: Bond and M believe that Elektra King is the grieving daughter of an old friend of theirs, rather than the mastermind behind her father's death, Russian mobster Valentin Zukovsky from Goldeneye has his bodyguard The Bull turn out to be in the employ of The Dragon Renard, and Colonel Akakievich mistakenly believes Bond is behind the plot to steal a bomb from the nuclear test site he's overseeing, allowing Renard to take control of the situation, a move that ultimately costs the Colonel his life.
• Jurassic Park (1993): John Hammond thinks the best of everyone by default. He's right in his pronouncements about Grant and Sattler being good people, but he badly miscalculates with Dennis Nedry: he trusted the Playful Hacker enough to give him sole authority over the park's security and computer systems, then underpaid him and thought he would still do his job as prescribed. Instead, Nedry took a bribe to perform industrial espionage for Hammond's competitor, causing the disaster. One could even call into question his assessment of Grant and Sattler, since he invited them to his island because he wanted them to give a positive review of the park to justify his management decisions to the board of directors at InGen. Instead, they make it clear they have a lot of moral issues with Jurassic Park and the revival of the dinosaurs. Only the lawyer ends up siding with Hammond for purely profit-driven reasons.
• In Man in the Attic, William Harley is convinced that his lodger Slade is a splendid chap and laughingly dismisses the ever increasing amount of evidence his wife uncovers that indicates that Slade is actually Jack the Ripper.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Emma Russell wants to save the world by setting all the Titans loose before the military can try to kill them in their sleep, and she hooks up with international paramilitary eco-terrorist Alan Jonah to that end. This backfires two-fold on her. Firstly, she assumes that all the Titans are ultimately good for the planet, and for the overall human race if not individual people, and she releases Ghidorah without reservations even though everyone else in Monarch can tell before Ghidorah is awakened that this Titan in particular is different from the others, and it's bad news for everyone full-stop. Secondly, Jonah's shallow claims that he wants to save the planet are only a skin-deep excuse for his overwhelming misanthropy, and Jonah is fine with doing what he can to prevent Emma from trying to stop Ghidorah destroying the world once Jonah works out that "nothing on Earth left alive except for Ghidorah and some bacteria = the ultimate culmination of his desire to wipe out humanity".
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: Dr. Nathan Lind appears to trust Apex executives Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa (the movie's human villains) completely when he partners up with them, right up to the moment they betray him and they're revealed to be responsible for Godzilla's rampage. In the film's novelization, most of Monarch are somewhat leery of Apex because of their shady past, but Nathan just thinks off the bat that Simmons must be a great guy because he's a corporate celebrity — Nathan in the book is also the only one of the heroes (even the ones who are rooting for Kong over Godzilla) who really thinks they should be stopping the rampant Godzilla first and asking questions later.
• In The Phantom of the Opera (1962), Professor Petrie trusts the publication of his music to Lord D'Arcy, apparently never suspecting (in spite of D'Arcy being dismissive, rude, and overall a total Jerkass) that he might not be on the up and up. And naturally he isn't - he steals Petrie's music and claims it as his own work.
• Before the beginning of Sanjuro, a group of young samurai incorrectly identify the corrupt official in the clan, and plan to root him out. This would have played out perfectly for the actual corrupt official if a certain nameless ronin hadn't been eavesdropping.
• Caliph Pahn in Sinbad of the Seven Seas completely trusts his vizier Jaffar, who of course betrays him at the first opportunity.
• Much like his portrayal in the source material, Knuckles of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) blindly trusts Robotnik and sincerely believes the Obviously Evil doctor to be his friend. His gullibility is somewhat downplayed from the game series, in that he had a reason to hate Sonic without Robotnik needing to pit them against each other, and he's perceptive enough to note that Sonic forgoing a critical Plot Coupon in favor of rescuing Tails isn't something a bad guy would do.
• Ralphie, a five year old kid from Storm of the Century, who insists that Andre Linoge, who has been responsible for five deaths so far and is heavily implied to be The Devil, isn't a bad guy because he gave Ralphie a present, and "bad guys don't give kids presents."
• The Black Hole: Dr. Durant. While everyone else is creeped out by the Cygnus, and that Dr. Reinhart is clearly utterly mad, and just want to get out of there now, Durant refuses to see anything wrong with the situation. Reinhart plays on his own desire for recognition to butter him up, and when Durant does catch on, Maximillian kills him.
• This Is the End: Seth Rogen and the others believe Jonah Hill is a perfect saint, despite Jay Baruchel warning them that he isn't. Jay turns out to right when Jonah prays to God for his death.
  Jay: Nobody's that nice.
  Seth: Jonah is that nice.
  Jay: Serial killers are that nice.
• During his brief appearance in Van Helsing, Victor Frankenstein acts shocked, shocked! that Count Dracula had ulterior motives in financing his scientific experiments other than for the science of it... even as said patron uses horror movie teleportation to saunter calmly around his laboratory as peasants with Torches and Pitchforks storm the castle. The film's novelization justifies it by having Dracula mesmerize Frankenstein into helping him.

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